Tired of getting your butt kicked when competing for customers locally? Are you baffled by how you get outranked each and every time by other local businesses when potential clients perform a search?

Well look no further, you have just discovered how to rise above your competitors. The secret is local SEO, (search engine optimization), and the infographic guide below will take you through the process, step-by-step. You will learn everything you need to know to rank first in local search results, and how to hold on to that ranking.

Before you jump into the infographic, let’s take a look at some of the highlights:

Top 3 Local Ranking Factors

The first thing you need to understand about local SEO are the elements that affect your local ranking. Based on a study published by Moz, the top 3 local ranking factors are:

On-Page Signals – When ranking your website for local search, Google looks at on-page signals first and foremost. This means what is most important to them are the following: Domain Authority (the strength of your domain name), whether or not you used applicable keywords in your titles and content, and how you present your business name, address, and phone number (NAP).

Link Signals – Coming in at a very close second are your link signals. This includes the quantity and quality of sites that link to yours. The relationship is directly proportional, meaning the higher the quality and quantity of sites that link to yours, the higher the probability that your search rank will increase. The downside is that it’s a double-edged sword, so if a lot of not-so-credible sites link to yours, it could actually negatively affect your local search rank. Another factor here is the anchor texts used for inbound links.

My Business Signals – In third place are elements on your Google My Business Page. These are easy enough to ace though, since all you really need to do is keep everything updated, and accurate on your GMB page. Keyword usage on your GMB page may also contribute to your local search ranking.

Top 3 Tips for Local SEO

Now you are aware of the most important factors that affect your rank in local search results. Now let’s take a look at how you can use this information to improve your local search ranking.

We’ve learned that keywords are crucial, as are quality links, and accurate up-to-date information. Now it’s time to get to work on improving your search rank with the following local SEO tips:

Improve Your GMB Page – Make sure you use high-quality images, and include your accurate business name, address, and contact numbers on your page. Refine your business description, and include keywords relevant to your business, and location.

Improve Your Link Profile – To get more high-quality local links, become more involved in your local community, and gain trust by participating in local events, and joining local organizations. If any spammy, or not-so-credible websites link to you, ask them to remove the links.

Improve Your Website – Include your accurate NAP on your website, and use your business and location keywords in your content, titles, and meta content. Also make sure that all content on your website is high quality, updated, and accurate.

Find out more about local SEO, and how it can help your business be more successful in the infographic local SEO guide below.

A growing trend among prospects and consumers is the demand for more personal web engagement. They want their browsing experience to be responsive regardless of the device they are using, and they want each device to know and remember who they are as they switch between technologies. That is a tall order, but one that marketers and technology can, and does, deliver on.

There are different ways brands can present their web experience described by several subtly different terms. This sometimes makes it difficult to keep them all straight so before we jump into the impact on a given site’s SEO, let’s present some definitions:

There are three main categories of web design: responsive, adaptive/dynamic serving, and separate URLs.

Separate URLs: The simplest yet most maintenance intensive solution. Often referred to as mDot configuration, the site serves different code to each device on separate URLs. This configuration tries to detect the users’ device, then redirects to the appropriate page.

Responsive: Responsive refers to web design aimed at allowing webpages to be viewed in response to the size of the screen or web browser one is viewing with. The best analogy I’ve have read is in relation to Bruce Lee’s ‘Be like water’ metaphor: ‘Be formless. Shapeless. Like water. You put water in a cup, it becomes the cup. Put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.’ Responsive content is like water. Regardless of the display medium – desktop, tablet, or smart phone – it naturally fits and is presented as the consumer expects it to look. The size, positioning and layout is natural. The same ‘water’ content is displayed to it’s best advantage.

Adaptive/Dynamic: Adaptive is responsive yet goes one step further. While responsive web design delivers essentially the same website to all users, adaptive design – using dynamic serving – delivers separate content to users based on their device, and on some platforms based on other factors as well. If we extend the analogy the content is a liquid, it takes the form of the container but the liquid changes based on the context – a pitcher of iced tea for a summer crowd, a mug of hot chocolate on a cozy winter night.

A responsive website shows the same content in different layouts based on the device used, while an adaptive website does the same thing, but shows different content based on the device used to access the site and/or the individual viewing it. The goal of both responsive and adaptive design is to offer the user an enhanced experience.

Responsive websites conform to fit the device they are displayed on, while adaptive will also dynamically serve different content based on the device or other personalization factors.

The very next sentence on the Google page backs this up. “Google does not favor any particular URL format as long as the page(s) and all page assets are accessible to all Googlebot user-agents.”

Many sources trumpet the benefits of responsive vs separate URL/mDot solutions. Not many look specifically at adaptive/dynamic served sites. As we have said adaptive is primarily responsive in nature, with the added advantage of contextual content. Let’s look deeper into why Google likes responsive behaviour.

Google offers the following positive attributes for responsive web design:

It makes it easier for users to share and link to your content with a single URL. This is also true of adaptive design.

It helps Google’s algorithms accurately assign indexing properties to the page rather than needing to signal the existence of corresponding desktop/mobile pages. Also, true of adaptive design. While segments of the page are dynamic, the page is viewed as a single entity.

It reduces the possibility of the common mistakes that affect mobile sites. Applies to adaptive as well as responsive.

It requires no redirection for users to have a device-optimized view, which reduces load time. Also, user agent-based redirection is error-prone and can degrade your site’s user experience. Again, applies equally to adaptive.

Saves resources when Googlebot crawls your site. For responsive web design pages, a single Googlebot user agent only needs to crawl your page once, rather than crawling multiple times with different Googlebot user agents to retrieve all versions of the content. This improvement in crawling efficiency can indirectly help Google index more of your site’s content and keep it appropriately fresh. In turn, helping with web search optimization. Again, true for adaptive sites. The bots, lacking any contextual and dynamic profiles is always in the same stage of the ‘buyer journey’. As such they get the base version or default content, and see it as a single, responsive page.

Adaptive web design, as far as SEOs are concerned, changes to fit varying types of screens and device sizes, or in more advanced applications changes the content based on user information. When a user requests content from a server, it detects the device or user and serves them separate HTML that is designed specifically for that context.

The internet marketing industry has changed a lot over the past few years. Years back when most digital marketers focused their efforts on questionable SEO tactics, buying email lists and ads, the focus these days is on content marketing – creating great content that attracts visitors and leads to your business.

By publishing content that is aligned with your end user’s interests, you naturally attract visitors to your online properties and convert them over time.

But that was until a few years back. The challenge today is to get your content seen.

By 2015, the number of blog posts published every single day had crossed 2 million. Getting your content seen is getting difficult day by day, and it’s imperative that you have a solid content promotion plan along with your content creation plan.

In fact, gurus like Derek Halpern and Brian Dean swear by the 80-20 rule of content marketing, which says that only 20% of your time should be spent in creating content, and the rest 80% on promoting that content.

1. Always reach out to people you mention or link to in your post

We all blog regularly. And we all have the habit of linking out to related blog posts and authority websites on the topic. We all regularly mention and cite strategies used by gurus (notice how I talked about Derek Halpern, Brian Dean and the 80-20 rule of content marketing above).

But here’s what:

Most of us don’t reach out to them and tell them that we’ve cited their work.

And this is a very underutilized strategy to get influencers to share your content, and get eyeballs (and hopefully links) from well known bloggers in your space.

Here’s how you can do this very easily. Suppose I wanted to reach out to both Derek and Brian because I mentioned them in my post.

I’ll quickly browse over to their blogs (Backlinko.com and Socialtriggers.com) and use the Hunter.io chrome plugin to find their contact emails.

Then I’ll shoot them a quick email that looks like this:

Hi Brian,

I hope life’s great in Berlin.

I love your 80-20 rule of content marketing rule. It makes total sense in today’s world. I just bragged about it in my new post on email outreach.

Not asking for anything, just trying to impress you lol.

Cheers,

Adi

That’s it. A simple email.

And yes- they might be receiving tons of emails like these a day, and they might not share your content. But think about it this way: you’re on their radar now.

And if you’re content is truly gold, they’re going to share it.

In fact, I got a long line of influencers from Joe Pulizzi to John Lee Dumas and John Jantsch to share our list of free marketing podcasts simply by shooting a quick email to all of them telling them how much I loved their podcast, how I’d compiled a list of the best marketing podcasts on the planet, and included their podcast in my list.

In the long run, this also helps you build a rapport with some great marketers out there!

2. Reach out to influencers who’ve shared similar content

You can always reach out to people who have expressed an interest in similar content by sharing it, and then reaching out to them about your content. This is a tried and tested strategy, and I’ll show you a step by step process to tap into it.

First, find all similar content. If I take the list of marketing podcasts above as an example, I would google for the ‘best marketing podcasts’, and compile a list of all similar blogposts.

Then, I head over to Buzzsumo, and check the Twitter Sharers for each of these links.

I can also go ahead and export the list of sharers.

Then I organize all this into one Google Sheet and sort by the number of followers and average retweets (both available from Buzzsumo) to find who the influencers are.

Then, it’s just a matter of finding their contact emails (again using Hunter.io) and sending them an email that looks like this:

HI Kamyar,

I hope life’s great in Florida!

I noticed that you’d shared Stephanie Saretsky’s brilliant piece on the Unbounce blog on the best marketing podcasts to subscribe in 2016. I loved that piece.

In fact, there are a great many podcasts out there for brilliant marketing advice. And I put together the most in-depth list on the planet with 121 podcasts.

Would you mind if I send you a link when it goes live?

Cheers,

Adithya

And the advantage of this strategy is that it’s really scalable. With the help of a few outreach tools like Mail Merge or Mailshake, you can send your influencer outreach emails to hundreds in one go.

3. Reach out to bloggers that do roundups

Roundups are underestimated. Most SEO companies think they’re just about links. What they don’t realize is that roundups can send a whole lot of traffic your way if you manage to get into the top ones.

Almost everyone from Moz to Problogger does roundups. You just have to personalize your outreach emails and make your content piece look interesting to bloggers.

Here’s a step by step process that you can follow:

Find good roundups

Just use these search operators from Ninja Outreach to find quality roundups in your niche:

I’m going to show you how you can connect with journalists and writers using a bunch of tools and some nifty outreach.

First, prepare a list of your target news websites.

If you simply search for your target keyword and click the news section in Google, you can see a list of the big publications in your industry.Make a list of these publications.

Now use the site:domain.com “keyword” operator to find the journalists and writers who write about your target topic on these publications.

Make a list of these writers and their contact emails (should be easily available form the website itself, and you can almost always find it using VoilaNorbert or Hunter, or some snooping around on their social profiles)

Once you’ve finished putting together your list, send out an email that looks like this:

Hi [Name],

I wanted to reach out and share some research we did on [topic]. The study reveals how:

Insight 1

Insight 2

Insight 3

I loved your article on [topic] on [publication name] and thought you’d be looking for similar interesting stories.

Just give me a shout if you’re interested in covering. Here’s the link to the study: [link]

Thank you for your time,

Adithya

There are some things to keep in mind:

Always mention the topic of your study/research/article in the subject line. Journalists and press writers receive hundreds of pitches a day- just give them what they’re looking for.

Keep emails short

List the most interesting insights from the study/research.

There you go!

With some logic and quick research, there are tons of ways you can leverage email outreach for content promotion and traffic building.

Got any nifty ideas on how you can scale this up, or how you built links or shares with these strategies?

An SSL is a method of encrypting information shared between two computers. That way anyone trying to look at the data being transmitted, won’t be unable to make any sense of it. It will be encrypted using a very complicated mathematical formula. It’s one of the most secure method at this time, and is extremely difficult to decrypt. Not until they can figure out how to make quantum computers work better at least. Google has also acknowledged that having an SSL is part of their ranking factors for websites. It isn’t a ton of SEO boost, but anything that helps rank the entire website is always good when it doesn’t require a ton of work. We are going to be setting up a free Cloudflare account, updating our nameservers, and installing two WordPress plugins to complete this task. They allow us to use their SSL certificate, so it will not be required to buy one.

Account Creation

You will need to create a free account with Cloudflare. It only takes an email and password to create an account, and you won’t need to verify the email address. After you enter in the account information, and it has been created. It will ask to scan for your website for its DNS records. Cloudflare will be giving us two new nameservers to update on our end after the scan is complete.

Note: The website needs to be hosted and live at the time as well.

DNS Record Config

The above DNS Settings is how I’ve been setting up my personal sites with them, though the default settings should work just fine for you.

Nameserver Setup

Cloudflare will assign you two new nameservers to replace the current ones in your domain registrar. Go ahead and replace the old ones, and let it update.

WordPress Plugins

These two plugins are not 100% required but are recommended for WordPress users. They can make life easier by preventing any headaches from happening.

For the Cloudflare WordPress plugin, it will ask for your API key and email address. You will find the API key under the settings tab. Click on your email address in the upper right to find the dropdown menu. You will want to use the global API key for this plugin. Copy and paste this key into the app’s API text box.

The only thing you will want to make sure of with insecure content fixer is that http_X_Fowarded_Proto is selected. If SSL isn’t live yet when you install the plugin, it may not automatically select it.

CloudFlare SSL Settings

After CloudFlare becomes active on the site, you can go into the Crypto settings in your account. You will want to be using a flexible SSL – this is because it does not require an SSL certificate for the origin server (where your website is actually located at).

Scroll down to the bottom of the cryptography page, and turn on automatic HTTPS Rewriters.

You will only need to create a one-page rule, and that is to forward all URLs to be served in https.

The format for if the URL matches: http://*domain.com/*

The * are a wild card, so this will setup an SSL for your sub domains on this domain as well. Along with any URL, that is using your domain name.

NOTE: If Cloud Flare isn’t “active” yet, the always use HTTPS option will not show up.

Save and Deploy this Rule.

Give it a couple of hours to update and do its thing, but the next time you visit your site. Go to http://domain.com without the S in HTTP. When the page is fully loaded, it should have redirected and be serving all pages in HTTPS. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.

Do you know how many individual ranking factors contribute to Google’s algorithm?

The rough count is around 200, although it is important to note that this number is constantly changing and incorporating new metrics. It also includes several controversial and debatable factors, which continue to be the source of intrigue and discussion. Make no mistake; some ranking factors continue to retain universal importance.

Inbound links provide a prominent example, as, alongside content, they are the two most powerful ranking signals, as announced by Google in March 2016. It is also nearly impossible to rank well for competitive keywords without links, so they remain a fundamental aspect of any SEO campaign.

So surely this is a numbers game, right?

Well, this used to be the case, but Google’s evolutionary set of algorithms have gradually changed the way in which links are evaluated. So, while a high number of inbound links can still translate into improved visibility, it is the quality (and more importantly, the relevance) of these links that will underpin a successful SEO strategy. The power of link relevancy is, therefore, crucial to SEO, but only so long as you can successfully harness this and use it appropriately.

With that in mind, here are three steps towards achieving this goal:

1. Build Relevance from the Page Title, URL and Link Source

While relevancy is one of the buzz words that you will often hear about when building links, this is a relatively vague term that is often open to interpretation. Google’s own interpretation is also subject to change, which makes it difficult for marketers to build a high volume of quality links over time.

In simple terms, however, the relevancy of your link must be framed within the context of its placement, with the nature of the surrounding content and the precise anchor text that you use, which are both key considerations. This should be part of a wider strategy too, as you look to build relevance that supports the reach, validity and impact of your links. Start with the page title and the URL of the link source, which can be tailored to include relevant keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business.

2. Consider the Importance of Focus and Topical Relevance

The drive among marketers to optimize the relevancy of their links has been the trigger for multiple strategies, including the use of authoritative guides and focused in-depth infographics. This detailed and concentrated content is highly relevant in the modern digital marketing realm, particularly as Google continues to favour longer-form content that can inform, engage and drive social traffic.

Such an ethos can also be adopted when creating alternative forms of content, while it is extremely valuable when attempting to build a small amount of links that offer optimal relevancy. Sites with high authority often have no qualms providing outbound links that provide additional information to their users which they may find helpful, but you should first ensure you have all the required content assets on-site before pitching third party content.

Finding topically relevant links can be made a breeze with the use of Google operator shortcuts, which allows you to get more specific search results. For example, let’s say you run an online fashion store, selling high-end designer labels and you’re looking to build brand awareness and acquire high-quality links through topically relevant sites. Head over to Google and try out the following search command:
“write for us” + “mens fashion”

Voila!

The same process works for all types of industries. This way, you can find a whole range of link opportunities that are topically relevant, then you can start pitching some quality guest articles.

3. Use Industry Spotlights as Core, Link Assets

We have already touched on the importance of contextual relevance, but this is particularly crucial when publishing inbound, home page links or those that use branded anchor text.

It is hard to ensure that these links are natural and relevant, but one way in which you can achieve this is to publish industry spotlights and features that are focused on the thought leaders within your marketplace. This creates a viable asset that can naturally include promotional links, without compromising on relevancy or the way in which the content is evaluated.

Interestingly, this type of asset also increases the number of natural backlinks that are directed towards your website, as those who are featured in your content will often link back to the article from their own sites. Playing into an influencers ego and asking for a killer quote for your content, can help your content go viral.

Another way is by pushing out press releases to relevant news sites or blogs, but you’ll have to ensure your content is newsworthy and you’re approaching the right editors or journalists. The key is always to remain on-topic and incorporate the most topical and relevant features that relate to your industry, as this ensures that your links retain value in the eyes of Google and capable of driving traffic.